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Subject:Re: How to express differences among versions From:Ben Kovitz <apteryx -at- CHISP -dot- NET> Date:Tue, 9 Mar 1999 11:19:46 -0700
Abbruzzese, Anne wrote:
>I have scanned, though very quickly, the archives and my style resources for
>tips on how to express the following:
>
>1a) This element is available *in* DB2 5.1 and above.
> b) This element is available *with* DB2 5.1 and above.
> c) This element is available *at* DB2 5.1 and above.
>
>2a) This field was introduced *with* DB2 5.1.
> b) This field was introduced *in* DB2 5.1.
> c) This field was introduced *by* DB2 5.1.
> d) This field was introduced *at* DB2 5.1.
>
>If anyone has advice and decides to respond, I would be grateful if you
>could copy me directly since I subscribe only to the digest. Thank you in
>advance for your help!
I'd go with "in" for both, same as John Posada.
The reason is mainly that the others sound dorky to me, but if you want a
harder reason, it's that you generally don't want to tell users about a
temporal sequence of changing versions; you want to just tell them how to
do their jobs. "In" seems to stress just the fact of the version
containing the element or field, omitting or at least de-emphasizing the
temporal aspect. This isn't much of a reason, since even if you need to
talk about other versions than the current one, I'd still recommend "in"
just on the basis of c.d. (coefficient of dorkiness).
But this leads to my main suggestion: are you sure you can't avoid talking
about different versions altogether? I recommend avoid the whole topic
unless you have a very special, solid reason for talking about it. If I
knew your reason for talking about different versions, I might be able to
suggest something else. Care to tell us a little more?
